This week I would like to present to you a great attacking game from Vassily Smyslov, the 7th World Champion! It is not easy to say what was his biggest strength in chess. He was simply fantastic in all areas of the game! He played ...
In a recent lesson one of my students innocently asked whether I every bluffed in chess, ie, played a move I knew to be bad in the hope of confusing my opponent. I replied in somewhat pompous terms that Masters really don't as a general rule indu...
If I ever create a list of things I tell my students most frequently, then the title of today's article would be at the very top. We all make mistakes ( read my series of articles on the subject here: http://www.chess.com/article/view/to-err-is-hu...
Last week we analyzed bishop endgames where a king played a major role. We studied a pattern where the bishop sacrifice cleared the way for the king. Today we will continue with the topic of king activity in bishop endgames but will look at differ...
It was the end of the Bulgarian Open – one year had passed since the times I described in my “Travelling Chess Player” series. This year it was not a successful tournament. It had started off with promise, but in the second half of the tournament ...
knightbandit (1569) - kharv (1582), chess.com Online Chess 2011 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 kharv: “Caro-Kann advance variation. At my level this is the line I encounter the most with the Caro-Kann, and since I haven’t had time yet to build anything el...
Lots of people have asked me whether I'm doing anything radically different these days to recently achieve some of my cherished goals (three IM Norms, several GM scalps) in the last couple of years - having failed to achieve them in almost 30 year...
Do you remember this memorable line from the 1999 blockbuster "The Sixth Sense": Cole Sear (played by Haley Joel Osment) says: I see dead people... They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't k...
I know what you're thinking: Here we go again! Another ridiculous, self-deprecating blog/rant by International Master Daniel Rensch... Well, after my performance at the SPICE Cup (North American Masters) in Chicago, I am left with no choice but...
We continue our series on bishop endgames and today's topic is king activity in bishop endings. Getting the king into the center should be an aim in most endgame positions. Usually, in bishop endgames the defending side can block the opposing king...
In the course of updating the Caxton Named Opening list I have been reading both the New in Chess Yearbooks and SOS series. Opening novelties are not dead. New ideas have been aided by computer tools, which have also rescued many obscure old ideas...
“Oh, good evening. Me still Alistair Cookie and this still Monsterpiece Theater.” – Sesame Street We’ve all heard that familiar refrain at chess tournaments – “I had a winning position, but then…I blew ...
scarredeyes: “I find it hard to form a plan in the middlegame. I love to attack, but I always find that I do better if the game is more ‘dynamic’ with both players under pressure. Also, I keep starting an attack that I feel may g...
Getting home after Saturday's games, I ate dinner and started preparing for Yankovsky. I had a general profile of him already, but I needed to play through a bunch of his games to ascertain what variations he played against my defenses to e4 (c5, ...
Getting home after Saturday's games, I ate dinner and started preparing for Yankovsky. I had a general profile of him already, but I needed to play through a bunch of his games to ascertain what variations he played against my defenses to e4 (c5, ...
[if you missed my first piece about this tournament, it is here] As day 2 began at the Western Class Championships, the two day schedule began. Separate schedules is something which may not exist outside of the U.S.-- they allow players to play m...
[if you missed my first piece about this tournament, it is here] As day 2 began at the Western Class Championships, the two day schedule began. Separate schedules is something which may not exist outside of the U.S.-- they allow players to play ...
It is well known fact that we learn the most from the games that we lost. But you need to analyze all of your games because sometimes a draw can teach you more than a bunch of losses. I want to present two draws that definitely helped ...
This is a quick guide to a video series. This series by IM Pruess, designed for intermediate (1300-1700 USCF) players, teaches about: the key opening principles how to use them to guide your opening play how to balance and compare them to ...
The topic of today's article is the "bad bishop" in the endgame. A bad bishop is usually a piece that is restricted by its own pawns, though it is also sometimes simply a piece that does not have much work to do. In contrast the opponent's bishop ...
As I mentioned in my last article “Chess in Alaska”, when I first began playing chess, the world was busy discussing the world championship match between Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short. It was being covered in installments in Chess Life magazine, ...
Tic-Tac (1361) - freddiebanocia (1448), Chess.com 2011 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bc4 When discussing an opening variation, at times I say that one side or the other has tried “everything.” In general, “everything” means 6 to 9...
No time to study opening theory? Shock your opponent with an SOS! With an SOS you deviate early (usually before move 6!) from regular lines in mainstream openings. So you will reach positions you have actually studied without having memorized...
Any strong chess player must know when to take a deep think, and when to make a move quickly. Time management is critical: you can’t be too fast, you can’t be too slow. Here are the three typical situations when you might want to take your time: ...
